How Andrew Carnegie Built the Architecture of American Literacy

“Between 1893 and 1919â€”a three-decade run that librarians refer to as the Golden Age of the American public library systemâ€”Carnegie paid to build 1,689 libraries in the U.S. These seeded the DNA for nearly every American library built before the end of World War II. That may explain in part why there is no central accounting for Carnegie’s libraries, which were built without any oversight from a formal program or foundation: Even libraries that aren’t historical Carnegie libraries share their aesthetic philosophy.”